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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27296032">Fiddler</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie'>innie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Future Fic, Near Future</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:35:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,533</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27296032</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Any chance you can come to New York with me?" he asks her.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Zoey Clarke/Max Richman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>64</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Fiddler</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarknightz/gifts">lunarknightz</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My thanks to my pal for the beta!</p><p>This is very vaguely a sequel to "Wild Things" but it is not in any way necessary to have read that story first.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She's using every dirty trick in the book to reclaim his attention from the black-and-white movie playing on their giant new flatscreen TV when Max's phone rings with a short, happy melody.  Zoey can't help stopping the sweet little circles her hips are grinding into him — it's stupid, because she knows the caller can't <i>see</i> what they're up to — but she stubbornly keeps her mouth on his neck.  Surely he won't pick up when he's got her kneeling astride him, ready to turn their Wednesday night from a movie night to a continued exploration of the many ways they fit together?  How does that meme go? She's almost ready to give a TED Talk on the subject of his sexual imagination and versatility?  That can't be right — that barely sounds like a joke, completely unworthy of Grumpy Cat.</p><p>Max is very, very good at translating his feelings into songs.  Almost as good as he is at transmuting them into sex.</p><p>He's humming, making his throat buzz against her lips, but she can tell he's not going to break into song; the sound is one of pure pleasure, that lazy indulgence when he lets himself be laid out under her, ripe for the picking and for her delectation.  He's still just a little damp from the shower, the lingering scent of the peppercorn soap he got from one of his niblings or cousins lending his skin a little spice.</p><p>One of his hands cups her ass, lightly, like it's just along for whatever ride she wants to take it on, but his other is tangled up in her hair, keeping her close, and she parts her lips against his throat to tip the scales just a bit more.  His phone rings again, the same bright melody.</p><p>He kisses the top of her head, possibly by way of apology, and sits up, fumbling for his phone.  Yes, it might be important, but <i>really</i>?  It's the first night they've both had off from work and school this month.  Maybe he can tell just from the ringtone who it is, and he's been wanting to talk to that person.</p><p>Max is already smiling when he connects the call and says, "Hi, Ma."  Zoey moves to get off his lap but he stops her, tracing her hairline with a delicate finger and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.  She settles against him, glad of his solid arm around her waist, his absent-minded tapping on her hip.  </p><p>The tapping stops as she's fumbling for the remote to turn off <i>Young Frankenstein</i> and she's squeezed instead.  The TV plays its little turning-off tune, and he was right, she really is surrounded by music that she's never paid any attention to.  </p><p>"Wait, really? In two weeks?" Max says.  He pauses, then puts his phone on speaker so he can open up his calendar.  "Looks clear.  I'll book a ticket tonight."</p><p>Alona Richman's voice is warm when she's talking to her only child, and every time she hears it, Zoey wonders how a woman that petite can have such deep tones.  "With all the grandkids back together with you and Milly coming in and Aurélien flying in from Paris, we'll get to do Papa's birthday celebration a little early.  You and Josh can blow up all the balloons."</p><p>That must be some kind of inside joke, because he laughs, and it takes Zoey a minute to remember that his cousin Josh is on Broadway, a singer and actor, and must have phenomenal lung power.  So Max sings not just when he's with her, but when he's with his family too. </p><p>"Love you, Ma," he says, hanging up and turning his winsome eyes on her.  "Any chance you can come to New York with me?" he asks her. He kisses her nose and slides the cool of his thumbnail against the back of her knee, where she's ticklish, and her legs fall open again.  He's got dirty tricks of his own.</p><p>"I can't," she tells him, because there's a deadline looming at work that's only five short weeks away, and everyone from Joan on down would shit a brick if she, the team leader, said she was skipping off for some R&amp;R in the middle of it.  "SPRQplus launches soon," she reminds him, her fists in the back of his shirt, pulling him over her as she lies down.  "Now where were we?"</p><p>"This doesn't look familiar," he lies, grinning down at her, but he kisses her before she can call him out.</p><p>*</p><p>Max has spent the last ten days talking to his mother in New Yorker code, saying things like, "Ma, I'll hop on the E if the AirTrain's still a joke," and being reminded which end of the train he needs to be on to find the right staircase to get out of a subway station that sounds more like a labyrinth than anything else.  Just yesterday she heard him say, "I'll be home before you know it, Ma," as if his life in San Francisco, with <i>her</i>, has just been him biding time until he can get back to his family.  That's not what he meant — she knows he loves her — but it stings a little to hear.</p><p>His flight is at some ungodly hour that, because of the time difference, means he'll land in New York only in time for a late lunch.  He's obviously not trying to wake her, but his heartsong does anyway.  She loves that he wants to sing how happy she makes him after all these years, wants to believe that he's all the proof she needs that she's living her best life.  Scooching to snuggle in the warm spot he just left in their bed, she listens and lets this song erase all of her doubts.</p><p>He's puttering around their bedroom, the dawn no brighter than a nightlight at this hour, and he sings — quietly, conversationally, like he's just talking to himself or to the faithful row of flourishing plants he's raised from little green shoots — as he gathers his clothes: <i>When I wake up in the morning, love, and the sunlight hurts my eyes, and something without warning, love, bears heavy on my mind, then I look at you and the world's alright with me.  Just one look at you and I know it's gonna be a lovely day.</i>  </p><p>She opens one eye, most of her face buried in his pillow, and sees that he hasn't even bothered to look over at her.  She smiles into the pillowcase scented with his shampoo, heart cracking open at this proof that he's still so besotted despite the fact that she's not flying out to meet his family — that she still hasn't met his <i>mother</i> except over FaceTime.  He doesn't need to look at her to remind himself that he loves her; she doesn't need to be glued to his side to remember that he's made her whole and happy.</p><p>She rolls over onto her back when he walks out of the bathroom, showered and shaved and dressed.  He grabs his little wheeled suitcase and pauses next to the bed.  "Love you, Zo," he says, blowing a raspberry on her tummy and humming when her fingers weave through his hair.</p><p>"Call me when you land," she says, twining her fingers through all that soft warmth.</p><p>"Sounds like someone's gonna miss me," he fishes, biting a little at her belly.</p><p>"Can't miss you if you won't go," she says with one last swipe through his hair.  "Have a safe flight."</p><p>*</p><p>"SPRQplus, Zoey!" Tobin screeches like a howler monkey when she tries a little small talk at the taco bar.  "We are at T minus something really close, and <i>now</i> you care that I make my own yogurt?"</p><p>*</p><p>She misses his call when she's out grabbing coffees and mocha cheesequakes with Mo, but instead of leaving a voicemail Max sends a text: <i>Thirty-seven Richmans throwing a Brooklyn rager.  Good times, good times.</i>  Half a second later, there's a picture coming through, of him in a crowd of smiling, happy people, some of them resembling him strongly.  Aurélien, the half-French cousin who lives in Paris, is easy to identify, as he's got an arm hooked around Max's neck and is kissing the side of Max's head, plus he's rocking some scruff that Zoey just immediately thinks looks quintessentially <i>European</i>.</p><p>It goes like this, the days he's gone, FaceTime chats when all his niblings and half his cousins mockingly coo in chorus, "Oooh, it's <i>Zoey</i>!" as he tries, laughingly, to shush them.  His phone gets passed from person to person, and she sees so many bright faces, says a few stumbling words to those who speak first to introduce themselves.  His mom was a very late baby, the longed-for daughter who grew up with four protective older brothers, all of whom got married and multiplied like that was their job: Max was the odd one out, the only only child, the only one whose father had erased himself from his life, but he'd never felt alone — though he was younger than all his cousins but older than their kids — because he was raised in Brooklyn smack in the middle of a tangle of relatives.</p><p>By the time the phone gets back to him on this call, he doesn't have a free hand to grab it.  He's holding a baby, his cousin Rachael's youngest, Helaina.  Helaina has a cloud of dark fuzzy ringlets that are all standing straight up as she keeps her eyes fixed on her Uncle Max.  Whoever's holding the phone knows better than to interrupt the baby's gasping contemplation, and Zoey gets to watch him melt in real time, secure in the knowledge that she's thousands of miles away and won't be called on to care for the baby in turn.  </p><p>(The first time she'd gone to Max's after the funeral and the weeks of waiting to feel even a little better, she'd forgotten to call ahead and had been surprised when she could hear him singing as he made his way with uncharacteristic slowness to the door.  He answered the door holding Evan and singing him something bouncy and bright: "<i>Lovers keep on lovin', believers keep on believin', sleepers just stop sleepin',</i> talk about unneeded advice, huh, little man? <i>it won't be too long</i> — Zo!  Hey!"  He'd tried to pass her nephew over to her, but she wasn't about to risk trading a happy if resolutely wide-awake Evan for the screaming mess he inevitably became when she was holding him, as if he could sense the howling void of grief inside her and wanted to stay far, far away.  She'd nodded through his explanation of David's saying Emily needed to sleep and he needed to work and could Max watch Evan for a couple of hours, tops?  She'd gotten up on her tiptoes to kiss the top of Evan's downy head, where it was nestled against one of Max's biceps.  She'd stayed up high, calves straining, to kiss Max too.)</p><p>"Uncle Max!" one of the younger niblings says, obviously thinking he's whispering, "The phone's for you!"</p><p>Max — all scruffy because he forgot to pack his razor, and she'd meant to remind him — smiles over at him, the warmth of him evident even through the screen, and says, "Thanks, Eli.  Zoey wanted to say hi to everybody, not just me."</p><p>The person who's holding the phone is canny enough to see where this is going and moves so the camera captures Eli, who's evidently thinking this through before focusing on the device.  "Oh.  I'm Eli!"</p><p>"Hi, Eli," Zoey says, smiling at this green-eyed mini-Max.  </p><p>"Hiiii," he says, suddenly shy, and runs off.</p><p>"Family," Max says, shrugging to indicate all of the insanity around him, where kids are being cuddled and swapped like they're on a carousel of cousins.  "Let's talk later.  Love you."</p><p>*</p><p>"Get your mopey ass outta my face," Mo says.  "He hasn't even been gone for a <i>week</i>."</p><p>*</p><p>"Be good for Auntie Zoey, Evan, okay?" Emily says, though she can barely bend to look him in the eye.</p><p>"You're not gonna have the babies, like, <i>imminently</i>, are you?" Zoey asks, alarmed, staring at the high, insistent bubble protruding out of her sister-in-law's stomach that looks large enough to house more than just twins.  "This is just a quick Evan-and-Zoey afternoon, <i>right</i>?"</p><p>"I'm not due for another seven weeks," Emily reminds her.  "And this should only be a couple of hours.  No need to feed him, even, because we just had a nice big lunch, didn't we, yum yum yum?"  Emily straightens, a hand on the small of her back.  "I'm gonna slip and use that voice in court one of these days and then I am going to straight-up <i>murder</i> your brother for knocking me up."</p><p>"Fair's fair," Zoey says, catching Evan's hands and letting him step on her shoes, dancing him around a little so he won't see his mother leaving for her doctor's appointment.</p><p>*</p><p>"What is going <i>on</i> with you, jitterbug?" Mom asks, her eyes worried over the rim of her mug.  "No, please don't take my toaster apart again."</p><p>*</p><p>She surprises Max, first by picking him up at the airport and then by not handing him the keys to his Audi.  She's got the driver's seat exactly where she needs it, and he's probably exhausted from his trip, and it's not often that she gets to drive a car this nice.</p><p>She can feel his gaze on her, and it's a cheering feeling, to know he's at last close enough to touch.  "So it sounds like you had a good time?"</p><p>He lights up, just like she knew he would.  "It was amazing.  First time in <i>years</i> we've all been together, and I got to meet the three new babies."  With so many of them in such a small space, she's kind of surprised that a week of proximity didn't lead to any blow-ups, but the Richmans are apparently an exemplar of familial harmony. She's more aware than ever that she won the argument of where they were going to cohabitate solely by virtue of the fact that her apartment was ten square feet bigger than his.  </p><p>"Plus we celebrated Papa's ninetieth birthday in <i>style</i>.  Everyone wanted to meet you, you know."  He throws her a grin and strokes her shoulder.  "Next time."</p><p>There will be a next time, obviously.  There are more babies on the way, more birthdays and anniversaries and graduations to celebrate, and Max doesn't <i>want</i> to go to any of these things without her.  "Hey, I meant to ask, how's SPRQplus coming along?"</p><p>"It's good.  We're on track."  It's true, and she wouldn't be able to say the same if she'd ditched to run off to New York with him, and she <i>knows</i> he doesn't resent her choice. He'd never even see it as a choice: him or her job.  But she's feeling . . . not guilty, maybe a little itchy? <i>Something</i>, she can't quite say what.  Knowing exactly what he's feeling would go a long way toward making her settle down. </p><p>There weren't any tell-tale heartsongs while he was away — she evidently needs to be in the same space as the person singing — but maybe he'll let something slip when they're back home, or in the morning when they're just waking up.  "Is something wrong, Zo?" he asks.</p><p>"Nope," she says, hoping she's not lying.  "Just plotting what to do with you when we get home."</p><p>"Ah," he says.  "I do love our brainstorming sessions."</p><p>*</p><p>Max sings when he cooks, out loud, and though she usually loves to hear him — both for the sake of his voice and because the sound means she's about to stuff her face with something delicious — she's antsy that it's been over a week without a heartsong.  She tells herself firmly that the lack of a heartsong simply shows that there <i>are</i> no hidden feelings, that he's as happy as he looks; a louder part of her wants to know how he can be so content when her restlessness hasn't abated with his return. How is he so okay with bouncing between the two halves of his life, not begrudging the bright line and geographical divide between his family on one side and her on the other?</p><p>Maybe there really is nothing to worry about, and she's just anxious about the looming SPRQplus deadline.  She looks down at her laptop, finds another snarl in the code, and sets about trying to unravel it without making a mess of something else down the line.  Forty minutes later, she's done, snipping and pasting the code fix so that she can run it in the morning.  The itchiness hasn't gone away. </p><p>Maybe the problem is entirely with her, and she needs to do a little soul-searching if she's going to figure it out.</p><p>*</p><p>She wakes a little after three in the morning and cannot fall back asleep.  Not even looking at Max, all warm and rumpled and scruffy beside her, is enough to lull her.</p><p>She might as well make the most of the time her brain is granting her.</p><p>She can't tear her eyes from the way his steady breaths make his throat dimple.  One of his beautiful hands is resting on his belly, where his soft red t-shirt has ridden up just a little, and the other is reaching out for her.  She must have dislodged it when she sat up, because his fingers are curled into the warmth of the bed.</p><p>He's been one of the pillars of her life for the past <i>eight years</i>.  She loves him like she didn't know she could love somebody that she got to <i>choose</i>.  She loves him like he's her family — which he is, since she brought him over to her parents' house for that first barbecue, where he basically fell in love with her dad's jokes and her mom's open-heartedness and David's . . . well, whatever charm David's got that helped him snag Emily.</p><p>She wants Max to feel the same way.  She wants to be part of what he means when he talks about his crazy family, not something separate.  She wants to just be "Zoey" to them, not a new face on a screen.  She wants to be there in person when they paint Brooklyn red, and she wants a brush in the hand that's not holding his.</p><p>Maybe she should call his mom and talk this through?  New York is three hours ahead, and it's not like eight a.m. is crazy early to call, right?  Before she can do more than flip the sheet down, Max stirs.</p><p>Watching him blink and smile sleepily up at her is still, almost three years into sharing a bed with him, a guaranteed high for her.  He's so unguardedly happy.  "Why are you up?" he murmurs just as she's asking him the same thing.</p><p>"Guess I'm still on New York time," he says, yawning and scrubbing a hand along his sandpaper jaw.  "But I could be persuaded to stay right here until you're ready to let me up."  His arm is already stealing around her waist, pulling her on top of him.</p><p>"I want to make a change," she tells him, and he freezes, the hand that was rubbing at his eye now a fist stalled above his face.</p><p>"To us?" he asks hoarsely.</p><p>"To me," she says, and he shakes his head, looking trapped.</p><p>"I wouldn't change anything about you, Zo."  He's so earnest, worried that he's somehow hurt her.</p><p>"What am I to you?" she asks, cupping his face in her hands.</p><p>She can tell he doesn't know what she's after, because he's never been shy with the words.  Still, he brings them out again for her when she asks.  </p><p>"You're my best friend.  You're the love of my life.  You're Zoey Isobel Clarke, who makes me happy."  His hands flex on her hips, like he's afraid the truth will be inadequate this time.</p><p>She bends to kiss him, lightly, then again and again.  </p><p>"One more question," she says.  Even she can't mess up this song, not when she's only singing the first famous line.  <i>If I were a Richman</i>, she sings, trailing off when she sees him realize how she's altered the lyrics, bastardizing poor defenseless <i>Fiddler on the Roof</i>.</p><p>"You're <i>proposing</i>?" he asks, hiding his face in his hands for a moment.  "Oh, God, you — you want to marry me?"</p><p>"You're the love of my life too, Max," she says, pulling his concealing hands away and pinning his wrists above his head.</p><p>"Zo, if you were a Richman, you'd still be Zoey Isobel Clarke, who makes me happy."  He breaks free of her hold and surges up to kiss her, and she can't tell if it's his words or his actions that have settled into place the piece that was rattling around inside of her.  It doesn't matter, not when she feels whole and strong and loved, and all she has to do is make sure he feels just the same.</p><p>The way he's groaning into her mouth and rocking up his hips tells her she's off to a very good start.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Max sings "Lovely Day" by Bill Withers and "Higher Ground" by Stevie Wonder.  Zoey plays with "If I Were a Rich Man" for her own purposes.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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